This invention provides a durable, nonwoven abrasive product having a significantly longer useful product life compared to conventional, but similar abrasive products.
Nonwoven, low-density abrasive products made of a uniform lofty web of continuous three-dimensionally bonded polyamide filaments, such as those abrasive products described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,227,350 (Fitzer), have found successful application for treating or conditioning various types of surfaces. These applications include, in part, removing mill scale from steel coil stock, blending of weld lines, preparing surfaces for painting or other coating operation, and removing various surface coatings in repair and maintenance operations. These successes have spurred the inevitable pursuit of providing increased value to the end user for such abrasive products and particularly for increased useable product life.
When current low-density abrasive products are used, for example in an automotive body repair shop, in the form of 4 to 6 inch (10.1 to 15.2 cm) diameter discs, these discs may encounter many sharp edges as the discs are used to clean or prepare automotive surfaces for coating, filling, welding, and other operations. Sharp edges include those associated with bent sheet metal, fasteners, fastener heads, rust-perforated sheet metal, and the like. While these types of surfaces are effectively cleaned or prepared by the low-density abrasive disc, cleaning and preparation operations around sharp edges exact a toll, causing the low-density abrasive product life (the time it takes to wear the abrasive product from its initial diameter to a diameter equal to that of its central attachment fixture) to be much shorter than desired. Under extreme conditions, the abrasive product life may be as short as one minute or less.
Related product life or product use life concerns also arise from the practice of abrading a workpiece by using the face of these discs, instead of by using the circumference of the disc. Invariably, methods using the face of these discs involve the flexing, bending, or otherwise exerting lateral forces on the abrasive disc, in some cases, to an extreme amount of flexing or bending.